A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War

by David S. Brown

From popular historian and author of the “marvelous” (The New York Times Book Review) The Last American Aristocrat comes the fascinating story of how in 1854, a new law—the Kansas-Nebraska Act—unexpectedly became the greatest miscalculation in American history, dividing North and South, creating the Republican party, and paving the way for the Civil War. The history of the United States includes a series of sectional compromises—the Constitutional Convention, the Missouri Compromise in 1820, and the Compromise of 1850. While these accords created an imperfect republic, or “a house divided,” as Lincoln put it, the country remained united. But then in 1854, this three-generations system suddenly blew up with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and here, David Brown explores in riveting detail how the Act led to the sudden division of North and South. The Act declared that planters, if permitted by territorial laws, could bring their enslaved peoples to the land extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains—the core of Jefferson’s old Louisiana Purchase which had been reserved for free labor. Northerners were shocked that free soil might now be turned over to slavery and responded with unprecedented backlash. In the bill’s wake the conservative Whig Party (winners of multiple presidential elections) collapsed, and the radical Republican Party was born—in six years it would take control of the central government, provoking Southern secession. In A Hell of a Storm, Brown brings history to life in a way that resonates with the events of present. Through chapters on Lincoln, Emerson, Stowe, Thoreau, and Tubman, along with a cast of presidents, poets, abolitionists, and black emigrationists, Brown weaves a political, cultural, and literary history that chronicles the Republican party’s creation and rise, the collapse of antebellum compromises, and the coming of the Civil War, all topics that mirror current discussions about polarization in our nation today. By illuminating the personalities and the platforms, the writings and ideas that upended an older America and made space for its successor, A Hell of a Storm reminds us that American history is always being made, and it can be both dynamic and dangerous, both then and now.

Genres: History, Civil War, Nonfiction, American History, Politics, Audiobook, Military History

352 pages, Hardcover

First published September 17, 2024

About the author

David Scott Brown is Horace E. Raffensperger professor of history at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, United States. He graduated from Wright State University in 1990 and earned a master's degree from the University of Akron in 1992. He completed his Ph.D. in 1995 at the University of Toledo. Brown joined Elizabethtown College in 1997, after previously teaching at the University of Toledo, Washtenaw Community College, and Saginaw Valley State University. He was named Raffensperger Professor in 2012.

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just to set your expectations if you plan to read this book about the passage and impact of the Kansas-Nebraska Act - it could just as easily, and perhaps should, have been titled “1854.” The book is really more about this particular moment in time in America than it is strictly about the divisive measure that became law that year. Kansas-Nebraska ends up serving as the springboard to a series of vignettes about the political and cultural notables of 1854, and the debates that swirled around slavery, rather than a close examination of the divisive Act itself.

I thought the book started out strong in tracing the background of how the Kansas-Nebraska Act came to be, and how it was a bad idea that only made divisions over slavery worse. Brown begins by going back to consider the drafting of the Constitution, whose compromises “prefaced rather than prevented a series of sectional disputes,” he writes.

Those papered-over disputes erupted anew when Sen. Stephen Douglas “lazily latched on to the convenient principle of popular sovereignty” in proposing and pushing through Kansas-Nebraska, upending decades of compromise to allow for slavery’s unfettered expansion, essentially all in the name of his own political ambition. While Brown offers little analysis of how and why President Pierce was persuaded to support the measure, which proved nearly as important as Douglas proposing it in the first place, he otherwise thoroughly follows its progression from proposal to reality, concluding that the Act was “almost certainly the most lethal piece of legislation to ever clear Congress,” and “the greatest miscalculation in American political history.”

Strong and compelling stuff there.

There’s more story to be told, though, and this is where Brown begins to both narrow his viewpoint and broaden his focus. He first aims to separate Kansas-Nebraska from most of what preceded, and followed, it. The Act, he argues, is often treated as just one more bullet point in a list of events that precipitated the Civil War - the Fugitive Slave Law, John Brown, Dred Scott, Lincoln’s election, secession. So a specific focus on Kansas-Nebraska is welcome.

But he then broadens his focus by introducing a large cast of characters, one chapter at a time, in an effort to illustrate how popular sentiment about slavery was shaped by Kansas-Nebraska. It’s here where it becomes difficult to consider Kansas-Nebraska in isolation. We get character sketches of notable individuals like Emerson, Thoreau, Garrison, Stowe, Tubman and - late in the book - Lincoln. Their stories are meant to illustrate how Kansas-Nebraska helped fuel antislavery sentiment, transforming the issue from a mere political question to a moral crusade.

It’s unclear, though, whether this antislavery sentiment was really fueled by Kansas-Nebraska alone, or in some cases, at all. Much of the moral outrage that the book’s cast of characters expresses comes in response to the Fugitive Slave Law, which hit many people more viscerally than the political debates over slavery’s expansion. As Brown considers the perspectives of writers and philosophers, the discussion becomes more abstract, more about the very nature of government and freedom, and less political and concrete about the consequences of Kansas-Nebraska and what should be done next.

What Brown ultimately seems to suggest is that the moral argument against slavery, combined with the political argument against Kansas-Nebraska, is what became the tipping point that led to war and slavery’s eradication for good. But he chooses to convey this point in the form of personality profiles and meandering side stories, which can add to the book’s readability but often obscure its thesis. I found this to be a distraction until I finally realized that the side stories aren’t meant to be side stories at all - they ARE the story.

So this book is essentially a cultural history of the year 1854. Kansas-Nebraska is meant to be the main event, and the through line in every individual’s story, but the thoughtful and thorough treatment of Kansas-Nebraska itself at the beginning doesn’t extend throughout the book. By the concluding chapter, Brown muses on everything from the 1854 death of Eliza Hamilton as the passing of an era, to New York’s World’s Fair that concluded in 1854, before swiftly summarizing in an epilogue everything that happened post-1854 in the slavery debate.

The writing can be engaging at times - Brown has a penchant for evocative descriptions of individuals and their hair, such as “the lavishly sideburned” Rep. William Richardson, “the luxuriantly maned Virginia agriculturalist Edmund Ruffin,” and “the neck-bearded editor” Horace Greeley. Largely, though, the book is written in a scholarly, ultra-literate, thesaurus-wielding style that I found somewhat ostentatious and off-putting: “It is tempting,” he writes at one point, “to interpret Walker as sui generis, a rare ruffian… and yet his outré legacy is far more ecumenical.”

Ultimately, the decision to focus on Kansas-Nebraska in isolation, and on personalities of the time whose viewpoints were purportedly influenced by Kansas-Nebraska, avoids many of the larger political questions that could have been pondered. It is true that later “causes of the Civil War” bullet points like John Brown, Dred Scott, Lincoln’s election and secession may not have happened, or happened in quite the same way, had it not been for Kansas-Nebraska. But was disunion, or some kind of reckoning over slavery inevitable? Was it uniquely Kansas-Nebraska that caused all the other dominos to fall, or would something else have done it regardless? If Kansas-Nebraska was indeed “the greatest miscalculation in American political history,” is it not deserving of a book of its own to explore this, without the cultural-history personality profiles that dilute its otherwise provocative message?

This book left me wanting more of what it started out with, and less of what it ended up with (not to mention less sui generis ruffians with ecumenical outré legacies). The antebellum era, and the individuals who lived through it, are fascinating - though this book about both felt to me a little less so.

Thanks to NetGalley and publisher Scribner for providing an advance copy of this book for review, ahead of its September 17th release.

[Dawn Michelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've struggled for two days to write this review; I am just unsure how to convey what I am feeling about what I read. I told my mom that this was clearly a deeply researched book, about MANY topics/subjects, that are all mushed together and thrown into book, but I also told her that I couldn't really use that as a review, so here we are.

The parts that were actually about the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the people involved [Stephen Douglass - meh ] were really good and I wanted so much more in regards to just that. Instead, we get that, along with all these side vignette's [going back to the forming of the Constitution, an odd chapter about the later life of Eliza Hamilton, glimpses of both Charles Sumner and John Quincy Adams {which I have read two excellent biographies about this year and so this was just repetition for me} and John Quincy's part in the Kansas - Nebraska Act {he was very against it}, and, and, and...there was just so many side stories that I honestly lost track ] that left me scratching my head and wondering just what this had to do with the actual topic, and by the end, I was just left confused and deeply disappointed.

Thank you to NetGalley, David S. Brown, and Scribner for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Kbullock · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not the best book for those who are unfamiliar with the subject matter. That would be Freehling's two-volume The Road to Disunion. In this book, Brown delves more deeply into some of the personalities who shaped the course of events, such as Stowe, Thoreau, and Tubman. It's definitely worthwhile and accessible to the general reader.

[Tanner · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short book centered on the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854—but also a disorienting one. It shifted to-and-fro between biographies of important Americans, using their lives to explain the impact of the bill. And the author’s overly verbose writing style resembled a try-hard college essay (I would know—I wrote try-hard college essays).

Despite these issues, the book was intriguing and highly relevant to current political events. Lines like—“Only when sectional issues…became…too large for politics-as-usual to handle did a politics-of-the-unusual come into play.”—really made me set it down and just think. It’s worth reading—just have a thesaurus on standby.

[Cropredy · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I'm in the airport bookstore prior to a flight to Omaha for a family vacation to Nebraska and Kansas, two states I had never visited. And, serendipitously, I spot this book and figure I can learn something about KS and NE history while I'm actually on the trip.

Well, sort of. A better title of this would have been "1854, a pivotal year told in a thematic way". The key here is 1854 as that was the year of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This law overturned the 1820 Missouri Compromise and left it up to the territories / future states to decide for themselves whether they wanted to be a free or slave state.

Brown tells the story of 1854 via various independent chapters (not in this order):

* The actual machinations in Congress to pass the Act
* Ralph Waldo Emerson
* Henry David Thoreau
* Filibustering expeditions to bring parts of Mexico into the Union as slave states (William Walker)
* Endeavors to purchase Cuba from Spain to add the island as a slave state to the Union (I did not know about this)
* Fugitive Slave trial in Boston of Anthony Burns (this was quite the big deal and I did not know this story)
* The end of the Whig Party, the rise of the Know-Nothing and Republican parties and the splintering of the northern and southern wings of the Democratic parties (1854 midterms)
* Abraham Lincoln's rise
* The role of Stephen Douglas who master-minded the Kansas-Nebraska Act
* Abolitionists like Charles Sumner and William Lloyd Garrison
* Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin
* Harriet Tubman and her courage at rescuing enslaved peoples in Maryland
* The southern argument for why slaves were better off than the "slaves" to industrial production of the Northern factories.

Essentially, all the currents of history and personages that can be traced as origins of the Civil War. You'll learn more about President Pierce (who was in office 1852-6) than anything you were ever taught.

But what the book is not about is what was going on in Kansas or Nebraska from the passage of the Act to the Civil War. "Bloody Kansas" gets only a passing reference as it happened after 1854.

So, add this book to that of many that attempts to tell the tale of how the country began the accelerated fall into disunion culminated in secession and Fort Sumter. The spin is to tell that story around 1854 - without revealing that spin in the book's title.

Several illustrations including political cartoons. Chapters are short (~20 pages) so if you get tired of a theme, relief is near at hand. A basic knowledge of where each state lies relative to each other helps. The writing style is what I would call popular history, scholarly-tinged (meaning, it is much more popular history a la Doris Kearns Goodwin than PhD thesis. Plenty of quotations and passages from the personages and commentators of the time. Well-sourced and footnoted.

I would not pick this book as your first book on the origins of the Civil War, just another way to tell the story to reinforce your understanding. It definitely explains why they teach the Kansas-Nebraska Act in middle school US History courses (a topic that didn't make much of an impression on me when I was a middle schooler and that was decades before TikTok).

[Devon · Rating 3 out of 5]

There has been some minor quibbling as to what exactly precipitated the Civil War. With A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War, author David S. Brown firmly lays out that it is the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that finally puts the ball in motion. Or, perhaps, it is the year in totality that is the last straw for the Union.

This book focuses less on the act itself and more the events leading up to it (stretching back to the founding of the country where even at that early point there was friction and calls for secession) and the direct, immediate aftermath. I was expecting more “on the ground” analysis, so to speak, like accounts given for the people who moved there and settled to try to sway the states one way or the other and gave rise to violence and murder, with John Brown having a helping hand in the chaos. That was not the book’s intent, although Brown did glide through the pages here and there without becoming any focal point in the text. Instead, it looks at leading abolitionist (and pro-slavery) voices who vented their spleen in the wake of the act, and you’ve got a host of people from Thoreau to Tubman. It also gives room to men who ventured off to Mexico and Cuba in an attempt to colonise and open new land to slavery, showing how rapacious planters were in their quest to spread bondage.

The author does a good job of showing how the dam broke with the Kansas-Nebraska act, and how once the Missouri Compromise was trampled on, the North decided to stop playing nice with the South. This is one of…I can’t count how many books I’ve read this year about the Civil War, and I’ve come to see that the South would bully and threaten with actual violence (sometimes meted out) in order to maintain and spread slavery, and in the spirit of unity/compromise/good will, the North generally just went along with it (the parallels for today’s politics can be clearly seen here, I think!), gaining far less politically than what they sacrificed to keep the peace.

The thing I loved best is the section on the recaptured runaway slave Burns and how Boston seethed over it. The New York Times told its readers “but we feel it incumbent…to resist and denounce every attempt at the violent resistance of any law…that may be made to substitute popular passion and mob force for the power of voting.” Nice to see even 170 years ago that people were being scolded into voting as if that solves all the problems and there aren’t hurdles in place to restrict or block your voice from being heard and acknowledged. That, too, was part of the problem that led to the rupture of the Union, because the North were forced to capitulate and return slaves to the South. They were made to feel like lesser citizens in their own towns and cities, at the whims of the South.

All said, I’d give this 3 1/2 stars. It veered off at times into dry territory, and so the strength of this book was in the biographies of the people. When speaking of the historical figures, the author had a way of capturing one’s attention.

I received a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Mr. Book · Rating 2 out of 5]

You can also see this review, along with others I have written, at my blog, Mr. Book's Book Reviews.

Thank you, Scribner, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Mr. Book just finished A Hell Of A Storm: The Battle For Kansas, The End Of Compromise, And The Coming Of The Civil War, by David S. Brown.

At first, it appeared that this book was about the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which the author called “almost certainly the most lethal piece of legislation to ever clear Congress.” The act, whose passage was led by Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, allowed slave holders to bring their slaves into the vast area between the Mississippi and the Colorado mountains, which had previously been closed to slavery by the Missouri Compromise. Brown’s view of the act is shared by such prominent historians as James M. McPherson (“the Kansas-Nebraska Act…may have been the most important single event pushing the nation towards civil war”) and Allen C. Guelzo (“The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 enjoys the dubious honor of being the only…legislation that caused a civil war.”)

The book started off strong. But, then once the act was passed, the focus of the book abruptly changed. I had been assuming that the author was going to devote the rest of the book to the consequences of the act in leading up to the Civil War. But, the author seemed to be much more interested in focusing just on the events of the year 1854. There was, of course, discussions of things that happened in other years, but it felt like those were more just for background info, for the prior to 1854 stuff, or just foreshadowing, for the yet to occur items. And there was much of the background pre-1854 stuff and not even even close to enough of the subsequent consequences of the act. I’m not complaining about the background, but am complaining about the lack of going forward to the consequences.

This took what could have a very good book and turned into a big disappointment. In the early stages of reading, I gave this one a chance at an A. By the time I was finished, I had to lower the overall grade to C. It was just a lost opportunity to turn what could have been a great book about the consequences of the act into just a look at the events, and important people, of one particular year. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a C equates to 2 stars. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

Mr. Book originally finished reading this on August 7, 2024.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting exploration of interesting events in the US of a single year, 1854, seemingly suggesting it was a year of special significance in events that followed. Following on books that also picked single years as pivotal: 1177, 1491, 1493, 1861, etc.

I'm not a fan of presuming artificial numbering of solar years that don't completely align with reality already (hello, Feb 29?). Numerologists might 1+8 = 9 and 5+4 = 9 and nines are special numbers in some cultures. Spooky and significant? not to me.

That silliness aside, several interesting things happened in 1854, just like many other years that don't divide easily by nine. But the publication of Walden by Henry David Thoreau, included in the book, was not well received when released. The author concedes it took years of sales to recover the costs of publication. So is it part of the mysticism the author wants to build around 1854? Hard to argue convincingly that it was.

Similarly, Uncle Tom's Cabin is covered in the book as important but it was released in 1852.

All to say, a nice exploration of events in the United States during the 1850s, but all of these tangential events to the Nebraska-Kansas Act of 1854 don't convince me that the author's hypothesis of it being a particularly pivotal act or period is necessary in understanding the complexity of events leading up to the US Civil War.

[David Corleto-Bales]

David Brown tells the story of how the U.S. descended into Civil War, the situation going critical after the Mexican War of 1846-48 when the slavery status of the newly acquired territories became the biggest issue in the country. Some of the early-antebellum founding fathers, (Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun) staved off the conflict by a decade in their Compromise of 1850, (which critics pointed out gave too much to the South.) In a couple of years, all three were gone, and Sen. Stephen Douglas of Illinois became the most powerful man in Congress. His Kansas and Nebraska Act repealed the old Missouri Compromise line of 1820, and southerners in Congress twisted the arm of President Pierce to accept it, dividing the country into two angry camps. Divided between north and south, the Whig Party collapsed, giving rise to a new party called the Republicans who opposed slave expansion in the territories while the Democrats favored letting the territories decide themselves. Interesting portraits of figures like Harriet Beecher Stowe and others involved in the deterioration of the American political system between the 1830s and 1860.

[Scott Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5 stars) Currently on a bit of an 1850s kick, especially in reading the actions that led to the US degenerating into the Civil War of the 1860s. A key factor in this saga involves the various actions in the future US Midwest (Kansas/Missouri) and how the federal government allowed the states to determine their slave/free futures. This work uses that as the centerpiece of the analysis, but it is really a review of the various political/economic/social actions that drove the US to its Civil War (hopefully the only one). In many respects, it covers well-trodden ground, from the Compromise of 1850 that pleased no one, the various actions/enforcements of the Fugitive Slave Act, to the increased division of slavery, from it being a good thing to a major evil. It is fairly readable and would work best as a refresher for those looking to review that aspect of US history that they likely forgot from school (or barely covered, depending on the subject). Not a bad library checkout, but maybe not one to keep on the shelf after reading.

[Francis X DuFour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great account of the prelude to America’s Civil War

Brown follows the history of America’s decline into rebellion, with many asides to explain more thoroughly the inevitable path to war. The political and social reactions to the Fugitive Slave Act and the bloody Kansas/Nebraska fight over those states’ adoption of slavery hi-light the history of the arguments. The destruction of the Pierce and Buchanan presidential administrations and the birth of the Republican party are thoroughly explained.

[Monte Lamb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book tells us about events in the USA during the time of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Rather than going into all of the details in Kansas and the Congress, it focuses on how the various parts of the country responded to the passage of the legislation. Some of it is very good and some of it seemed to drag for me. However, its focus is different than the normal book written about these times which does give a different insight to the times.

[Michael Tresnowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

At its best, this book explains a crucial turning point of American history, how the debate over slavery in new territories destroyed political parties, political careers and ultimately the union. It’s extremely readable and navigates the personalities and the broader social context well. The only downside is that the book jumps around a bit, with essays here and there about somewhat tangential topics. These side topics are interesting but not necessary to the overall narrative.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've always wondered about how the United States couldn't avoid the Civil War, how we had reached a place where compromise was a dirty word. This book went a long way in explaining what happened, how it happened, and how it could not have been avoided. The writing was crisp and to the point, well written and flowed from crisis point to crisis point.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not much new here other than a brief chapter on the role that mercenaries in Cuba played in shaping antebellum tension between anti and pro slavery forces. Otherwise a scattering of well trod ground about how the nation came to be divided and some of the regular key players.

[Daniel Farabaugh · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is really just an overview of different people and trends discussing their ideas during this time period. He does not really link them specifically to the Kansas-Nebraska Act nor does he really show the impact of the act itself, essentially ignoring the events of Bleeding Kansas.

[Yusei158 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I swear this book spend like 200 pages before actually about kansas-nebraska act

[Michael Grady · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent book, but not great. This is where I would give a book a 7 if it was a 1 to 10 scale.